Taiwan’s government said on Wednesday China was trying to create the legal basis for a future attack with its “misleading” interpretation of a key U.N. resolution, in an escalating dispute over who has the right to claim sovereignty over the island.
China says that 1971’s U.N. resolution 2758, which led to Taiwan’s expulsion from the body and Beijing assuming a seat at the U.N., gives international legal backing to its claims over the island, and reiterated that point in a long foreign ministry statement late on Tuesday.
Taiwan, formally called the Republic of China and whose government fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists, says that is nonsense given the resolution made no mention of Taiwan and that in any case the People’s Republic of China has never ruled the island.
TAIWAN SAYS CHINA MISLEADING INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that China was “deliberately misleading” the international community with its characterisation of the resolution.
“This aims to create a legal basis for altering the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and for future military assault against Taiwan,” it said.
“Only Taiwan’s democratically elected government can represent the 23 million people of Taiwan within the United Nations system and multilateral international mechanisms,” the ministry added.
In response, China’s foreign ministry told Reuters that no matter what Taiwan says, it does not change the fact that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are part of “one China” and that “reunification” would happen.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and regularly sends its military into the waters and skies around the island.
China says Taiwan is merely one of its provinces.
Its foreign ministry’s statement on Tuesday, full of Cold War-era language about the “reactionary” Republic of China government and its late leader Chiang Kai-shek’s “clique”, said the People’s Republic was the rightful inheritor to governing all of China, including Taiwan, following the 1949 revolution.
